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CIA Files Include Clippings From The Harvard Crimson

By Thomas W. Janes

Copies of Central Intelligence Agency memorandums, which The Crimson received yesterday after requesting agency files under the Freedom of Information Act, show that the CIA maintained clippings from The Crimson in their files.

Significant portions of the three memoranda, which were originally sent to the director of the CIA's Domestic Contact Service by the chief of the CIA's Boston field office, are deleted in the xerox copy sent to The Crimson.

Charles E. Savige, deputy chief of the CIA's information and privacy staff, said yesterday that all of the deleted portions refer to information that is either classified or exempted from the Freedom of Information Act.

One memo refers to an April 1973 Crimson which described the CIA's Cambridge Office in Tech Square.

The memo also refers to a flyer distributed at a demonstration two days after the article appeared. The flyer reproduced the Crimson article and called for a demonstration at the Cambridge Office.

The memo states that "the flyer was distributed at Rindge High School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, during an evening meeting of the Cambridge School Committee, 17 April."

Savige said that information "could have been the result of domestic surveillence," but he added that the information "could also have been forwarded by an interested citizen."

Savige said the CIA's domestic field offices sometimes "enlist the cooperation of American citizens" to gain access to information.

Another memo, dated February 1967, refers to a Crimson article in which two Harvard students described how they helped Ramparts magazine reveal the CIA's subsidization of the National Student Association (NSA).

The memo says that "besides being a somewhat sympathetic article it is interesting in that at least two of the researchers for the Ramparts article brag of the part they played in its compilation." The third memo, dated May 6, 1952, says only that "attached is a clipping from The Harvard Crimson dated 10 April 1952. Forwarded for possible interest."

The copy sent to The Crimson does not reproduce the article, but on that date The Crimson ran an article on five Burmese educators that visited Cambridge as guests of the State Department and the CIA's Office of Education.

Gene F. Wilson, information and privacy coordinator for the CIA, said yesterday that the agency searched through its four major filing systems--security, operational, central reference, and government personnel--and that with the exception of one job application in April 1956, the memos sent to The Crimson represent all the informatio

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